Infestation 1
|Synopsis1= At the Kirtland Underground Munitions Storage Complex in New Mexico, Wade briefs a group of government officials on a recent incident at the complex involving "an exotic biological weapon release" and "cadavers animated by an engineered viral strain of unknown origin". The Army has hidden many classified items at Kirtland, including highly advanced robots and an interdimensional portal leading to "Dimension Z". Wade believes the gateway was the source of the release. The base's sci-bots have activated the gateway, which is supposedly shuttered, allowing observation of Dimension Z. Wade suggests to the officials that the other dimension could be useful in many ways once cleared of "''animated cadavers". Many hands reach out of the gateway and pull Wade into it. A moment later, a wave of blood bursts out of the gateway, followed by a horde of zombies. At Coffin HQ, Cross, the Covert Vampiric Operations team leader, awakens from a recurring nightmare in which his wife and son are transformed into zombies. Cross, a vampire, recently learned that his wife and son are still alive, but he can never see them again. Britt, a CVO vampire field agent, summons Cross to a briefing on the Kirtland situation. Overmars, the director of CVO, informs them that the President wants to know if any of the government officials are still alive. Benny the Smith, a zombie whose condition is under control, says the dimensional gate must be shut down. He plans to use teleportation Artillica to get the team into Kirtland, but warns them that he cannot detect the portal, which is probably also Artillica-based. The portal is also invisible to Nikodemus, the CVO demon consultant, who has attempted to locate it with occult divination. Cross, Britt, Benny and Bools, the other CVO vampire field agent, teleport into Kirtland. Benny attempts to close the portal while the three vampires hold off the zombies with machine guns. Radio contact with Coffin HQ is cut off. Benny collapses; as Cross attempts to carry him to a better defensive position, a zombie pulls off Benny's arm and the Artillica control device he was using with it. The team jumps up into a ventilation shaft, Cross passing Benny up to Britt. Recovering, Benny says he was losing himself to "the Undermind", a group consciousness driving the zombies to spread to other dimensions via the portal. The Undermind wants Benny because of his knowledge of Artillica. Overcome again, Benny bites Britt on the leg, causing her to push him out of the shaft to the zombies below. Britt dismisses the bite, reminding the others that she is already undead. The three vampires crawl out of the ventilation shaft into a room filled with robots. Benny and a horde of zombies teleport into the CVO Artillica storage compound. As the zombies devour the technicians, Benny accesses the Artillica stockpiles. At the Coffin command center, Nikodemus alerts Overmars to the security breach; Overmars contacts the President. At Kirtland, as Cross and Bools try to figure out how to activate the robots, Britt notices dark marks spreading out from the bite on her leg. Cross and Bools activate Scibot-21, which asks how it can help. Benny has returned to Kirtland and activates the portal to open other universes. As the warbots finally activate, Britt clutches her head and cries out. Benny teleports into the room and takes her with him as he disappears again. Bools wants to leave, but Cross insists on recovering Britt. At the portal gateway, Benny tells Britt, now a vampire zombie, that the Undermind can "taste" her. Britt floats into the air before the portal; energy flows from her hands and forms into four white vortexes. With Benny and a zombie horde at her back, Britt declares herself "the gateway and the opener of paths... of two worlds and therefore of all worlds." Cross and Bools arrive with the warbots, which knock out Benny and attack the zombies. Cross tries to contact Britt telepathically, but she throws him across the room. Bools uses a warbot to blast Britt's head apart, but it instantly re-forms. Pushing over Bools' warbot, Britt zombifies it, declaring that "The hunger knows no limits." Scibot-21 analyzes the portal, recognizing it as a transdimensional gateway reliant upon Artillica artifacts to function. The robot tosses the control device Benny was using into the gateway. As it begins to overload, four white duplicates of Britt's form emerge from her body. Britt screams to Cross that she is sorry as the gateway explodes with light. With the portals inactive, the zombies collapse, no longer hearing the Overmind's voice. Restored to quasi-normality, Benny arranges protocols allowing him to open the portal again one way and allow the CVO team to look in. He explains that the Undermind has found four other versions of Earth and sent human and robot zombies into each. If any of those universes contains magic or technology more sophisticated than theirs, the Undermind will grow more powerful and could spread into more universes. Britt is still unconscious; Benny believes the Undermind has taken part of her with it into each world, "using her duality as a power source." Benny activates a protocol to search the other universes. As Benny, Cross, Bools and Scibot-21 look on, the four white vortexes appear again. In one, a man with a peculiar equipment backpack watches as a strange beam of energy flows into a zombie. In another, a man wearing a helmet screams as a zombie bites him on the neck. In a third, giant machines do battle, and in a fourth a glowing-eyed person is screaming. Through the main portal to Dimension Z, the bodies of zombies form a hideous, grinning face. ...to Be Continued. |Appearing1= Featured Characters |MemorableQuotes1= |Errors1= |ItemsOfNote1=* Robots can be turned into zombies, too. * The scenes visible through the four vortexes on the final page are details of panels from the subsequent Infestation comics. They appear to have been carefully chosen to prevent the franchises in question from being clearly recognizable. For example, the Starfleet arrowhead on Lieutenant Emigh's helmet is just beyond the edge of the vortex and is therefore invisible. However, Emigh is missing the mustache he has in ''Star Trek: Infestation'' #1 as published. * Contains a two-page preview of ''G.I. Joe: Infestation'' #1. |RealWorldRefs1= |Footnotes= }} Category:Crossovers